Yay for Blue posts finally starting up again! Unfortunately, it seems that most of the threads addressed today involve topics which have already been commented on in the past. However, further clarification from Blizzard on anything is always appreciated!

Today's topics include:

Ink Traders Coming to Stormwind and Orgrimmar

Improving Looking For Dungeon Queues

"Linear" Cataclysm Leveling Content

Potential Tol Barad Changes

Improving Outland Leveling

Check out the full Blizzard posts after the break!

Blizzard Posts

...on Ink Traders Coming to Stormwind and Orgrimmar

Can we get a ink trader in ogri or twilight highlands? or is there a reason for them not to be there? o.o

Ink Traders are being added to Stormwind and Orgrimmar in 4.0.6.

...on Improving Looking For Dungeon Queues

The LFD tool is currently unacceptable with 45 minute queue times. Saying "more people need to play tanks" is not a solution. I don't know what the solution is, but it's Blizzards JOB to come up with some kind of solution, not just say "Sorry, customer, suck it up!"

TLDR: Blizzard needs to fix the long wait times on LFD and not just say "play a tank if you don't like it!"

There's a false perception that we don't want to change things or iterate on things regularly. This is not true. We are always looking at ways to improve the game and the systems within it. Finding the right solution though doesn't always happen as quickly as some would like, and when trying to account for human nature, things get a bit more difficult to predict. We can only provide the tools, see how things go, iterate on them, and see if things improve for you. But, these things take time and there's an awful lot of differing opinions out there.

No one is saying, "This is it, take it or leave it", we're simply saying, "This is our intention. Here's how we designed this to work/play out. Try it out and let us know how it goes."

We're still going to keep pushing to do better, to make things as balanced as possible, and to provide an epic and entertaining gaming experience. We just won't be able to do it overnight.

The Looking For Dungeon queue times are understood to be of issue for some people. If/when we find a better way to get you in to a dungeon quicker, we'll let you know.

...on "Linear" Cataclysm Leveling Content

For Cataclysm, we wanted to create more immersion with better storytelling, and we wanted your characters to feel connected to ebb and flow of Azeroth. This was something we hoped to accomplish through a number of mediums including quests.

Overall, we think we were successful in achieving those goals and making the leveling experience more story-driven, but we realize we may not have hit the nail perfectly on the head. For example, we've received a lot of feedback that suggests we made questing a bit too linear this expansion, and we're not in total disagreement. It's cool that your character has a visual impact on the world and can watch as key events unfold, sure, but sometimes it can feel a bit awkward when you're unable to explore content at your own pace because you're still locked to a particular phase. We also hear your concerns about cut-scenes, tradeskill nodes, and phasing in general.

We're taking all these criticisms in stride and will be using them to improve the questing experience for future expansions and, to an extent, future patches. When it comes to questing, it's matter of finding a good balance between story and gameplay, and that tightrope can be a hard one to walk. Your feedback keeps us from swaying too far in any one direction, though, so we greatly appreciate threads like this one. Keep it up.

/high five /respek knuckles

...on Potential Tol Barad Changes

Thank you for taking the time to create this post and the constructive nature of it.

I'll try to answer for you what little I can. As I'm sure you've seen, we've made some smaller adjustments to Tol Barad to help some right now, but we know that these changes are just that, minor. That said though, we spent a lot of time developing Tol Barad and want to make sure that it is utilized and enjoyed as originally intended. We are continuing to discuss ways in which we can do this, but it's going to need additional development time. We do have some plans that we'd like to put into play, but I can't enlighten you on what those are as of yet and can only say that they will be done in the future at some point. Unfortunately, I can't give a better time table than that. I know that seems lacking, but Tol Barad is not "out of sight, out of mind for us."

Hi General Forums and Neighbourhood Blues. I would just like to ask nicely for some open dialog on what is going on in Tol Barad as far as plans for the future hold.

Any information, however small, would be greatly appreciated as the community (as far as I can tell, and I've done some research) are very dissapointed with the current implementation of Tol Barad, and would love to see just a hint of Blizzard wizardry going on behind the scenes.

...on Improving Outland Leveling

Hi Syrenea. While I certainly commend your desire for difficulty, I don't think we want to slow down the leveling experience. I think most people will agree that they're either leveling an alt and want to catch it up quickly, or they just started playing and want to catch up to their friends.

Certainly some of the lessons we've learned in quest flow, mechanics, rewards, etc. could make Outland quests better, but we don't have any plans at this time to go back. And certainly not to slow the process down. While the Outland zones maybe aren't as awesome as Cataclysm zones, they definitely aren't horrible, and the speed at which you rocket through them certainly helps the majority hit their end game goals.

If you're finding the process of being a minor god squishing Outland creatures in your palm a little tedious, maybe find some ways to up the challenge. Pull a few more mobs at a time. Maybe even challenge yourself and add one more every time. Or how about every enemy you kill in under X seconds you remove one piece of gear. I don't know, I think there are things you can do to keep it interesting. If you have any you use and enjoy, share them!

Comentarios

Comentario de SidohtheMage

on 2011-02-03T17:56:44-06:00

about time. i'm sooOOOoo tired of having to go to Dalaran.

Comentario de Rainemard

on 2011-02-03T18:06:08-06:00

Eh, nothing significant besides the Ink Traders... just alot of diplomacy and tidings-over. Thanks to Miyari though for keeping those of us who don't regularly skim the forums for blue replies updated! =)

A side note on Bashiok's Outland reply: It's very obvious he comes from a generation where the level of your imagination was directly proportionate to your level of enjoyment. I feel sorry for any subsequent posts he has to sift through which read along the lines of "It's Blizzards job to keep us entertained."

Comentario de gmon

on 2011-02-03T18:15:19-06:00

about time. i'm sooOOOoo tired of having to go to Dalaran.

This. Although what I do is just send it to an alt that I left in Dalaran and have him swap inks for me. :D

I don't think the questing was too linear. True, some of them were part of a really long quest chain, but that's just to give justice to the lore or the flow of that particular zone. Otherwise, you can freely choose what zones you want to level in. In my personal experience, I started with Mount Hyjal, skipped Vashj'ir and went to Deepholm, finished the Ramkahen questline in Uldum but skipped Harrison Jones and jumped to Twilight Highlands, although by the time I did so I was almost 85 so it didn't really matter. Now that I'm 85 I can freely go back to those zones and quests and do them in whatever order I want.

Comentario de christabelle

on 2011-02-03T18:26:02-06:00

The 45 minute queue isn't something they can fix. The issue is: lots of people play DPS. Its easy. Few people play tanks- its a pain in the ass, and takes a patient person. Or an @#$%^&*. (although nobody likes an #$%^&*! tank >_>) The cooldown on the LFD tool is whats nuts. Leaving a bad group so you don't wipe 850 times because of a hunter with a loose pet (and his group full of retard guildies) is acceptable. Except you're punished for it. Which is a bit ridiculous.

I, for one, love the lore in the game. I love the immersion. Hehe, understandably, not everyone likes lore...but without lore, there are no quests. /shrug.

This expansion does seem to be...small, but there's only 5 levels to get, so I find it reasonable.

Why would Blizz go back to mess with an xpac that's two xpacs old now? Especially to make it harder? Cap at 70 and raid if you want it to be hard.

Comentario de Scotia

on 2011-02-03T18:29:29-06:00

Mmmm. I love the questing and phasing and cutscenes in Cata. In comparison, taking my Worgen through Outlands is like pulling my own tooth with a pair of pliers and no drugs.

And I'm not so sure that lack of tanks is the entire issue with the LFD tool. Noticeable part, certainly, but I think people are ignoring the new (flawed and poorly implemented, but maybe getting a little better next patch) Guild Leveling stuff. Fewer people willing to do pickups because they're "urged" to only group with guildies for guild achievements and leveling. Toss in a handful of "ZOMFG, we can't AOE zerg this like Wrath, and if we wipe just once, I'm /ragequitting the group" mental midgets who never get out of their basements, and you have something that was originally win turn into one big fail because of outside forces.

I loved the LFD tool previous to this Guild Leveling BS. Sure, I had to wait a little while for a group sometimes, but that was ok. I had plenty of other stuff to keep me busy while I was in the queue. Now, the wait times are simply uncalled for.

Comentario de Hyperspacerebel

on 2011-02-03T18:30:53-06:00

For the queue problem, I'd like to see a 1 or 2 dungeons that don't require a tank and/or healer. They'd have special mechanics to make that possible. That way, if a DPS didn't want to deal with a longer wait, they could just queue for one of those. Because everyone who queues would be DPS, it should fill up as fast as 5 people can queue.

Comentario de FamousAtomicBoy

on 2011-02-03T18:33:58-06:00

I've posted this in multiple threads on the official forums, but it still baffles me that people think Blizzard has a magical solution for LFG queue times. If you have X number of tanks, X+4 healers, and X+100 dps all queuing at once, how on earth does Blizz minimize the wait time for all those dps players? They literally can't, because it's purely an issue of supply and demand. You cannot make use of a resource unless it's available. Not enough tanks is not enough tanks. I'm not pointing the finger here, I just think that this is the nature of the beast and those that are particularly vocal about it need to think about it using a much larger perspective than they obviously are. But hey, maybe I'm not thinking outside of the box.

Comentario de Hyperspacerebel

on 2011-02-03T18:36:11-06:00

But hey, maybe I'm not thinking outside of the box.

I dunno, my solution seems like it would at least partially relieve the problem.

Comentario de Miyari

on 2011-02-03T18:52:44-06:00

For the queue problem, I'd like to see a 1 or 2 dungeons that don't require a tank and/or healer. They'd have special mechanics to make that possible. That way, if a DPS didn't want to deal with a longer wait, they could just queue for one of those. Because everyone who queues would be DPS, it should fill up as fast as 5 people can queue.

That's reasonable. My awesome horrible idea was to allow dungeons to scale higher than 5-player and just add a variable mob scaling / loot system, so that you can do heroic 10-player dungeons via Looking for Dungeon that would require a single tank and healer but you could take 8 DPS. EPIC!

Comentario de Lichprince

on 2011-02-03T18:54:04-06:00

Still no Outland change or Northrend :-(

Comentario de FoShizzle8

on 2011-02-03T18:55:40-06:00

yay there gonna improve heroic dps queues.now i can wait a shorter amount of time only to fail in them because of bads

Comentario de Monday

on 2011-02-03T18:57:20-06:00

Still no Outland change or Northrend :-(

If they change Northrend I will be pissed.

Outland is still cool, but could do with a revamp. Example: Turning the quest at Shatter Point from a taxi that you can use items on into a vehicle. It would streamline the questing experience a little more imo.

yay there gonna improve heroic dps queues.now i can wait a shorter amount of time only to fail in them because of bads

Two things.

1. They aren't changing anything.

2. They're*

3. Obviously you only fail because everyone else is bad, amirite?

Comentario de pezz

on 2011-02-03T18:59:56-06:00

What lovely brute-force thinking.

'Here is the problem and here is why it's difficult to fix.'

I DON'T CARE ABOUT DETAILS JUST MAKE MY LIFE BETTER.

One thing that irks me though, floating/invisible/stuck in trees and/or rocks nodes are not 'trying to find a balance between story and gameplay.' It's not like we want five nodes we can reach and five nodes we can't. It's not like there's a compelling reason why fish magically disappear when I fly 10 yards to the left. It's just bad design that needs fixing.

Comentario de Rekeiji

on 2011-02-03T19:02:31-06:00

For the queue problem, I'd like to see a 1 or 2 dungeons that don't require a tank and/or healer. They'd have special mechanics to make that possible. That way, if a DPS didn't want to deal with a longer wait, they could just queue for one of those. Because everyone who queues would be DPS, it should fill up as fast as 5 people can queue.

Wasn't Occulus half way there with the drakes? A full instance like that could work.

Comentario de Monday

on 2011-02-03T19:04:37-06:00

For the queue problem, I'd like to see a 1 or 2 dungeons that don't require a tank and/or healer. They'd have special mechanics to make that possible. That way, if a DPS didn't want to deal with a longer wait, they could just queue for one of those. Because everyone who queues would be DPS, it should fill up as fast as 5 people can queue.

Wasn't Occulus half way there with the drakes? A full instance like that could work.

Oculus was kind of like that, except that it had the vehicle system, which is why most people disliked it (from what I've seen anyways).

If it could be an all dps dungeon without the use of vehicles, that would just be awesome.

Comentario de Hyperspacerebel

on 2011-02-03T19:12:43-06:00

Yeah, I too am not a big fan of vehicles. One possibility is something along the lines of the last "boss" in HoR: a sort of escort quest. But in this case, the mobs would all attack the NPC you're escorting, so it would be a DPS/cc race to kill/cc all the mobs before the NPC dies. I'm sure there are other ways to make a tankless/healerless boss too.

Comentario de FoShizzle8

on 2011-02-03T19:13:22-06:00

Still no Outland change or Northrend :-(

If they change Northrend I will be pissed.

Outland is still cool, but could do with a revamp. Example: Turning the quest at Shatter Point from a taxi that you can use items on into a vehicle. It would streamline the questing experience a little more imo.

yay there gonna improve heroic dps queues.now i can wait a shorter amount of time only to fail in them because of bads

Two things.

1. They aren't changing anything.

2. They're*

3. Obviously you only fail because everyone else is bad, amirite?

ya,although now from actually reading the original post on the battle.net forums.it sounds like another "im a casual QQ i dont have time to wait 30 mins for a queue" type post

Comentario de Monday

on 2011-02-03T19:14:23-06:00

Yeah, I too am not a big fan of vehicles.

I don't like vehicles in dungeons. However, some of the vehicle quests were my favorites.

Comentario de mcmoore

on 2011-02-03T19:16:27-06:00

Why all the LFD QQ from 'casual' people - It's an MMO FFS, you whine about not getting enough people of the right type do do a group activity but then also whine you don't do it as a guild because you like to be solo - Really, wtf!

Comentario de Monday

on 2011-02-03T19:19:33-06:00

Why all the LFD QQ from 'casual' people - It's an MMO FFS, you whine about not getting enough people of the right type do do a group activity but then also whine you don't do it as a guild because you like to be solo - Really, wtf!

lol? Because obviously everybody is in a guild that can get a group going as soon as somebody asks.